The KF600 is LG’s attempt to go after the iPhone in terms of user interface; using a small touch sensitive screen and a larger display screen, the KF600 uses touch sensitivity and the ability to program buttons to make a flashy and stylish phone. The small touch screen lights up, and gives you context sensitive buttons covering all the common functionality you’d want to see on the phone, and is basically the Chocolate updated to a color touch screen. For actual phone usage, it’s a slider model that has a numeric keypad that’s pulled out when the phone is, well, a phone.
In the videos, it’s sharp and impressive, and very slick. In actual use? Not so much. We found the buttons to be less than responsive, and we had to poke at things repeatedly to get them done. At no place or time on the phone were we able to get to a sensitivity setting on the phone. Frustratingly, while our fingers seemed rather hit or miss, setting the phone in our pocket and just doing every day actions would cause it to navigate to strange places on the menu. On the plus side, there is some thought put into tactile feedback when you push a viewscreen button, and the phone makes a soft click to give you an audial cue. The trick is getting it to accept the clicks when you want.
In terms of stylishness, the KF600 is very attractive, and surprisingly thin. The display screen is bright and easy to read. Even the touchpad area is bright and easy to read. The slider keypad is also a joy to use – it’s lightweight, responsive, and virtually everything we wish the touch screen were.
In terms of features, it’s got a good MP3 player, and the UI on it is lovely. The camera is a 3.2 megapixel snap shot camera, with an LED flash. Camera snapshot quality is good; we noticed that the photos had very good color saturation and clarity on our test model, and it was surprisingly easy to use, in part because it could still take input from the numeric keypad.
As a phone, it got excellent reception no matter where we took it, and it pulled in a signal even deep indoors. Speaker quality and microphone quality is good, and it’s got Bluetooth capability if you have a desperate desire to look like a cyborg with an ear piece.
Unfortunately, after two weeks with the mobile, we came to the conclusion that the attempts at the touch sensitive track pad didn’t quite pay off. We’re hoping that there’s a quick revision or firmware update that increases the sensitivity and gives an option for turning the track pad OFF when the phone is dormant. Indoor LED Display